Impulsa Science and Academic Award  is granted to a person who has developed his or her activity within the framework of a research or teaching project in the field of sciences (including social sciences), who has excelled in his or her discipline and has high development potential.

Borja Ibáñez was born in Madrid in 1975. He received his medical degree from the Complutense University of Madrid, and his doctor in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He went on to specialize in Cardiology at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation of Madrid, where he began his clinical research. After completing his clinical studies in Cardiology, he move to the USA, where he began training as a basic and translational researcher at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. After several years in the USA, Dr. Ibáñez was recruited to return to Spain and set up a pioneering project combining clinical Cardiology assistance and coronary care at the San Carlos Hospital with cardiovascular research at the National Cardiovascular Research Center Carlos III.

Since returning to Spain he has led a research team made up of basic researchers and clinical cardiologists, the priority of which is to continue the line of research begun in the USA, related to limiting the extent of myocardial infarct. In addition to studying possible protective mechanisms during an infarct, Dr. Ibáñez is leading a clinical study on patients that aims to demonstrate the possibility of limiting the extent of infarct in the early phases by means of administering very early pharmacology (immediately after diagnosis and while the patient is being taken to hospital). This project will test the results obtained in the laboratory on patients with acute myocardial infarct. Advanced imaging technology, (cardiac magnetic resonance) will be used to evaluate the effect of treatment.